Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance

The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, NIWA for short, is a network of wikis and their associated websites that aims to chronicle all things Nintendo, supporting wikis independent of large corporate wiki groups, most notably Wikia.

History

NIWA began as an expansion of the concept of Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis, shortly after the administration of Zelda Wiki contacted Archaic, Bulbagarden's head, about a possible affiliation. It was jointly decided, shortly thereafter, that rather than a simple affiliation, an entire network of Nintendo-based wikis could be begun, and Super Mario Wiki was shortly asked to join as another founding member.

After a little under a month of planning, NIWA was launched on February 14, 2010, to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the public launch of Bulbapedia.

Within two months more, preparations were complete for the launch of Metroid Wiki and WiKirby, which had been spun off by users of the original trio of NIWA wikis, and they joined the group. Wars Wiki, a wiki based on the age-old Nintendo Wars franchise, became the first member recruited from outside the original trio. Throughout October and mid-November, NIWA experienced a boost of wikis every week on Friday, starting with Lylat Wiki (October 1), then Pikipedia and Pikmin Fanon (October 8), StrategyWiki (October 15), SmashWiki (October 29), WikiBound (November 5), Donkey Kong Wiki (November 12), and Nookipedia (November 19). On November 30, Golden Sun Universe joined, notably on a Tuesday rather than Friday. NintendoWiki, which had been worked on secretly for quite a time before, joined on December 10. After no new wikis joining for a several months, Fire Emblem Wiki joined on April 20, followed by Starfy Wiki on April 28. After nearly a year of no new wikis joining the alliance, F-Zero Wiki joined on March 16, 2012, followed by Icaruspedia on March 23, 2012. Dragon Quest Wiki joined on March 30, 2012. After nearly two years with no new wikis, Hard Drop Tetris Wiki joined on January 17, 2014. Inkipedia joined on July 4, 2015. Most recently, ARMS Institute joined on June 22, 2017, bringing the total number of members to 24 wikis.

Name

NIWA's name, an acronym of Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, is also romanized Japanese for "garden", symbolizing the natural growth of the community around the fandoms that make it up. This is fitting, given Nintendo's Japanese origins, and since romanization of Japanese is important for most of the wikis.